


Between and Outside the Lines

by Eloarei



Category: Fire and Hemlock - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: A surprising lack of magical nonsense, Actually I think it's a pretty good excuse, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Crush at First Sight, F/M, Ignorance of the law is no excuse they say, POV Third Person Limited, Retelling, Yuletide, Yuletide 2020, well. fifth sight but who's counting?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:01:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28128801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloarei/pseuds/Eloarei
Summary: A sad looking man catches Polly's eye at a funeral, but she doesn't speak to him. Several silent meetings and five years later she learns his name, but she still doesn't know why he looks so lost and alone, and why he won't let her help. Can what she doesn't know hurt her?
Relationships: Polly Whittacker & Leslie Piper, Thomas Lynn/Polly Whittacker
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Between and Outside the Lines

**Author's Note:**

  * For [basketofnovas (slashmarks)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/gifts).



> The first official Yuletide fic for user Slashmarks! ...which got a bit out of hand. I don't know what made me think I was smart enough to say a single thing about this book, and I really don't know why I wrote a 17k retelling. But here it is. It's a "change one thing and see what happens" sort of AU, and I went a bit of a simpler way with the faerie rules, but I'm hopeful it works out well enough. I'm a little surprised how 'plain' the story gets when you skip the first part, but I guess that's sort of the point, huh? Hm.

The first event in Polly’s life which she could look back at and say definitively that she was embarrassed was when she accidentally crashed a funeral. Nobody seemed to notice that she shouldn’t be there, and she managed to sneak back out without any problems, but it still stuck out in the map of her memories as the first time she could remember being really aware of her own wrongdoing. She was just about ten at the time, around the age of accountability, so maybe that was why. She was starting to see the world for what it was, and realizing how she fit into it, and realizing that her actions _could_ have consequences (even though they didn’t at that time).  
  
Or maybe it was because that one older man had looked at her sort of pityingly (or pitiably, perhaps; he didn’t seem enthused about being there either), like he could tell she’d made a big mistake, something to be embarrassed about. He didn’t call her out on it, but she always remembered that glance that seemed to say, “we’ve gotten ourselves into a bit of a pickle now, haven’t we?”  
  
For all that she was now _becoming accountable_ (‘growing up’, Granny would have nicely called it; ‘learning to look around you for once’, Ivy would say), Polly’s awareness was still adjusting to the size of the world, along with the rest of her. There were so many things to learn, and at eleven years old it was a struggle to guess which ones merited her full attention. Which details were important, and which were trivial? What would affect her future, and what would be forgotten?  
  
She went with her mother to London, to speak with a lawyer about a divorce (something Polly _knew_ would affect her future; _this_ was not in question. The only question was did she want to open her eyes to it, or pretend for a little longer that she didn’t understand?). It was as unexciting as one might expect, until a horse crashed through traffic on their way back to the station, nearly trampling their taxi.  
  
“What the--!” the taxi driver said, and Polly must have craned her head too close to the window, hand clutching the door handle, because Ivy said, “Polly, for God’s sakes, stay in the car!”  
  
She _did,_ of course, even though something in her wanted to run out into the street and ...help? There was a man out there, wrestling with the horse as everyone else stood around or sat in their cars and stared. It was apparently quite the exercise, because his hair was becoming very disheveled, and even from this distance she thought she could see the sheen of sweat on his brow.  
  
“Oh!” she said, clutching the door handle again, as the man’s glasses fell off his face and were unceremoniously smashed by the panicked horse. She hoped he could still see what he was doing without them. Everyone in the street was counting on him to get the horse under control, all holding their breath and being otherwise useless. Polly wanted to do more than hold her breath, but she was stuck.  
  
In a very long minute or so, the man had the horse calmed down, and traffic continued on around the mess that had been made. Polly turned her head to watch the man as they passed. She thought he probably couldn’t see her all that well without his glasses, but he caught her eye anyway. He looked very heroic to her, standing there like a knight after a duel, all in disarray but victorious. Maybe he could tell that she was the only one who really appreciated the display of courage.  
  
She didn’t think about whether that interaction would be important to her future. It stood out on its own, like a scene from a movie, instead of asking to be addressed by her growing sense of awareness. Her memory labelled it ‘fantastic, but ultimately irrelevant’.  
  
School continued. Her father moved out, as his and Ivy’s divorce went on. Polly developed some interest in reading. When Ivy had to go to her lawyer again, Polly asked if she could instead visit a bookstore she noticed along the way. Distracted with her own problems, Ivy was only too pleased for Polly to have something else to do, and she allowed it. And so Polly spent the hour in a much more favorable state: surrounded by stories, and those other people who also loved them. At the end of the hour, she had just about decided on the one she would buy and was taking it to the counter, when she bumped into something very tall, which was also holding a book. Unsurprisingly, it was a man, and he dropped his book at the same time Polly dropped hers.  
  
“Sorry!” Polly said, as the man mumbled, “Please excuse me,” and they both stooped awkwardly around each others’ heads to retrieve their books, which unfortunately fell mostly face-down in a tangle, creasing some of the pages. The man looked disappointed at the damage, and Polly was going to apologize again when she looked _very_ far up into his face and became too distracted for the words to appear.  
  
This man looked quite familiar, though she didn’t think she had run into him before, at least not literally. He was tall, and she didn’t remember ever having to look up at someone quite so much before. But his gold glasses glinted in a familiar way, and the look on his face, like life was one big inconvenience after another, seemed very distinctly like something she had seen before.  
  
He nodded down at her and backed away before she could say anything. “Excuse me,” he repeated, and went on his way. Polly was left to stare down at her book and the big wrinkle on page 147. The cover wouldn’t sit flat anymore either. She hadn’t bought it yet, so nothing was stopping her from returning it to the shelf and picking a different copy, but she felt attached to this one now. In the future, when she read it, she would think about the man who seemed very lost and alone in his problems.  
  
She finally did recognize him, when she saw him on television some while later, although she didn’t know who he was.  
  
“I’ve seen him before!” she said to the TV as it scrolled through men and women dressed in black suits, wielding instruments like weapons in a mighty, somber battle. She hadn’t been paying much attention to the orchestra before. It had just served as the backdrop to her reading. But when she looked up, like some single noise out of the whole cacophony had caught her attention, there he was: the lonely man from the book store. She didn’t know _how_ she recognized him, when he was dressed so much more formally than the jeans and sweater he’d worn then. Maybe it was the glasses, or the way he cradled his cello like it was his only dear friend.  
  
 _‘Huh,’_ she thought, aware that it was very strange to have seen this man again. There were _how_ many people in England, after all? Too many for chance encounters, she knew, though she didn’t at the time think of the situation as being fateful in any way. It was just a curiosity yet.  
  
Aside from when she read her book, or when she happened to hear orchestra music (which didn’t happen very often; Ivy’s new boyfriend was more interested in sports than music), Polly didn’t think of the lonely man. She went on with school, making and losing friends, meeting and forgetting trends, and bearing the new normal that her home life had become in the wake of her parents’ divorce. For the most part, she did not find it worth mentioning, although she still felt sometimes that she would like someone to mention it _to,_ who might understand the vague feeling of being dragged into a situation and then left out of place. At very least, her mother seemed _a little_ more happy with David than she had been the years before.  
  
One moment Polly felt she would have liked to tell someone about was a school trip she took, to a little town with some historical significance, which most of her classmates found not terribly interesting. She herself was more interested in exploring a new place, a town with no foreknowledge of her or Fiona or Nina. Her two friends followed after her into a shaded hardware store, hoping to escape the heat, where they found a young man they deemed worthy of their flirtation. They were teenagers now, after all, which was probably why they couldn’t resist. That, and the allure of the unknown, as if teenage boys in one town were likely to be much different than the ones in another.  
  
But Leslie did seem nice, at least. He told them he was about to start at a school very near their own, and that they’d have to meet up some time, which, of course, the girls were very excited about (especially Nina, who was very much into boys). Leslie was not the aspect of the afternoon which stood out the most in Polly’s memory, however. It was the sudden appearance of his father: an imposing man of significant height.  
  
Polly’s first thought, which lasted only a short second, was that this was the man from the bookstore, the sad cello man. But it was clear after just a cursory inspection of his face that it was _not_ him. They did share some resemblance, but this man did not look softly lost or in any sort of perpetual trouble. He seemed the sort of man who went looking for problems to fix (with a hammer, most likely), and who would _make_ a problem if he could not find one. Polly thought he’d probably never been in a maze in his life-- which she later realized was an odd thought, but not one she could find it in her heart to rescind. She knew it was true, and… relevant in some sort of way. She was a teenager then, after all, and her awareness of the world was growing in very strange leaps and bounds.  
  
Of course, the not-the-sad-cello-man then chased them out of the store, and all they took with them was a promise to meet Leslie some months later. And they did; they became friends with him as well as one could become friends with an older boy who went to a different school. They didn’t see each other all that often, but it was a memorable sort of acquaintance, a familiarity where they drifted towards each other at parties or when they met in the street.  
  
On the occasion, Leslie would even ask to meet up with them for outings, where they might stroll around the town with ice cream cones and the girls would casually try to win Leslie’s favor. (It was never a very competitive game.) One day he invited the three of them out to meet some friends, but Polly was the only one available to go. She knew the other two would grouch slightly about her unfair advantage in winning over Leslie, but it wasn’t Polly’s fault that they were indisposed, and she knew they (or Nina, at least) would not have hesitated if it were _Polly_ with the chicken pox. And so she went.  
  
She was surprised to find that the friends Leslie was inviting her to meet were quite a bit older than either of them: college students at very least, almost certainly graduates. She wondered where Leslie would have met such people, until he told her they were the Dumas Quartet. _‘Oh, music friends,’_ she thought, figuring it maybe made a sort of sense now. Leslie was a talented flute player; he must have met them in the orchestra community. People with similar fortes always seemed to know each other one way or another.  
  
But he surprised her again when he introduced the four of them individually. “--and my uncle, Tom,” he said, when he came to the last of them.  
  
Polly looked properly at ‘uncle’ Tom and was instantly taken aback. “I know you! You’re the sad cello man!” she said, a little too shocked to remember to be embarrassed at saying such a thing.  
  
His friends laughed to hear their teammate described in such a way (perhaps they thought it was comically incorrect; or did they find it unusually apt?), but Tom himself just blinked up at her from where he was sitting, unphased by the comment, but somewhat phased by Polly’s appearance. “Yes, you _do_ look familiar,” he agreed. “Have we met?”  
  
“Not as such, I don’t think,” said Polly. “Only we’ve passed each other a handful of times. You stopped a horse from trampling my taxi once, and then we ran into each other at a bookstore. I still have the book I dropped, with the pages bent. Oh, and I saw you on television, playing in an orchestra, but you wouldn’t know that.”  
  
“What a memory you have,” one of the men commented, grinning, clearly assuming that Polly remembered _many_ ‘unimportant’ details of her life, and not simply that she’d become somewhat fixated on this one for a while. She did not correct him.  
  
Tom was staring at her with his mouth open just the slightest bit, thinking. “Yes, I remember. And before that, you were at the funeral.”  
  
Funeral? Polly thought back, and it came to mind quickly. She didn’t know how she hadn’t remembered it right off the bat, or how she hadn’t connected the sad cello man to the weary funeral man. Perhaps it was because there had been the horse situation in between, and he’d looked very determined then, much different from the rather hopeless sort of expression on his face that she now remembered seeing at that funeral. And, well, he had looked a lot older then too, somber and very clean cut.  
  
“Oh, that was you!” she said, feeling her face pull up into a smile as the pieces fitted themselves together. “I should have recognized you, but I think I blocked that funeral from my mind, I felt so embarrassed at showing up uninvited.”  
  
“I wish _I_ could forget it,” Tom said with a humorless laugh. “It was a particularly depressing event, even for a funeral. Which of course makes me wonder why you went, if you weren’t forced.”  
  
Polly cringed. “It was an accident,” she told him, and then relayed the story, which was a good way to ingratiate herself to the group, as it turned out. People always liked to hear embarrassing stories about new friends, maybe because it proved they were relatably human. The quartet found it very funny, and bought her a couple of snacks in thanks, then offered a variety of their own less-than-flattering memories.  
  
The conversation drifted, as conversations do, and between Leslie and the quartet they explained all about the formation of their group, their travels and their tribulations. The four of them had just come back from Australia, and were celebrating the release of a book of short stories they’d written.  
  
“That sounds so interesting!” Polly exclaimed. She’d never read anything by someone she _knew_ before.  
  
Ann, the quartet’s one female member, smiled ruefully. “If we’d known we were going to meet you here, we’d have brought you a copy.”  
  
“Oh, it’s alright--” Polly was about to say, when Tom reached down into his bag and pulled a book out.  
  
“Here, you can have my copy,” he said, handing it to her. Polly was going to protest that she couldn’t possibly (after all, Granny had taught her some manners), but Tom shook his head. “I was the cause of the damage to your other book, after all, wasn’t I? The one with the creased pages? Take it as an apology, at least.”  
  
Polly didn’t bother trying to explain that the wear on the bookstore novel actually added to its sentimental value, in her opinion. She just nodded and took the book, holding it carefully in her hands. She gave it a cursory look-through, but thought it wouldn’t be polite to actually read it at the moment. “Thank you,” she said, a little surprised that her voice came out rather meek-sounding.  
  
The group continued chatting as their milkshakes and other snacks slowly disappeared, and when Leslie mentioned going home for the next holiday, Polly thought about what that home might be like, which brought to her memory the one time she had met Leslie’s father.  
  
“Isn’t your father rather old?” Polly asked somewhat bluntly. She was too mystified to think of another way of saying it.  
  
Leslie laughed. “I don’t think he’s as old as he looks; he’s just got that kind of face, y’know? But he’s at least in his thirties. I dunno, probably his forties by now?”  
  
Polly frowned, doing calculations in her head, but sort of badly. “Then how can Tom be your uncle?” she asked, wondering if he’d meant it not in a literal sense. “He’s never old enough to be your father’s brother!” It did cross her mind briefly that Tom could be his _mother’s_ brother, but when she remembered Mr. Piper’s face, all doubt escaped her. The two looked too similar.  
  
“We’re half-brothers,” Tom explained with some patient humor. “Hence Tom _Lynn.”_  
  
 _“Ohh.”_ Polly felt rather foolish not to have thought of that, but as an only child even _normal_ sibling relations were not intuitive to her.  
  
They decided to go to a nearby carnival after that, though the quartet all took a moment to write their names and numbers in Polly’s book. “We’d love to hear what you think of it,” said Ann. “It was more of a collaborative effort than a competition, but we’ve all got our favorites anyway.”  
  
“I wouldn’t normally approve of scribbling inside a new book,” Tom said as he carefully penned his information so that it would be remotely legible, “but I think I can make an exception for today.” The way he smiled showed that it was mostly a joke, but only mostly.  
  
“It’s basically an autograph,” Ed added. “I think that’s allowed under even the strictest rules of literary respect.”  
  
The carnival was a quick walk away and they took it at a fast stroll, Sam leading the way apparently by the attractive scent of fair food. Polly found herself walking close by Tom, glancing the long way up at him curiously, from time to time. It wasn’t as drastic of a distance as it had been when she’d bumped into him at the bookstore, but he was still quite tall, made to appear even more so by his relative thinnness. It was funny, he didn’t look quite so sad or beleaguered anymore (though a hint of it still hid there, somewhere behind his glasses), and Polly had to wonder if he’d just been having a bad couple of days before, or if things were really much better for him these days.  
  
“Was Australia nice?” she asked, as a kind of ice breaker.  
  
“Very,” he said, almost cheerfully. “Hot, though. I think I saw more sun in that short time than I have in the whole rest of my life. Have you traveled?”  
  
“Oh no, not at all,” Polly told him, a bit ashamed at her youthful lack of worldliness.  
  
Tom nodded in empathy. “Well, there’s a charm to staying home too.”  
  
“Home _is_ where all my books are,” Polly agreed, which was the needed segue into what they had each been reading lately, aside from the endless rereading apparently required of one’s own book before publishing. It wasn’t the conversation Polly had intended; she wanted to sate her curiosity about Tom’s mood and gauge how similar he was to the man she’d imagined all those years. Even so, she found the book conversation very engaging, and informative of Tom’s personality in other ways. For example, she was surprised to find that he apparently liked fairy tales.  
  
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, defensively but in a way one would never use against a real opponent, “but a good fairy tale is a story unlike any other. It says more _between_ the words than most other stories will in their entire text.”  
  
Polly was skeptical, but she was willing to keep an open mind, or at least _try_ to. “Hmm, like a riddle, I guess? You’ll have to recommend me your favorites.”  
  
The conversation about books continued as they strolled around the carnival, following after whoever had taken the lead at the moment. They discussed the books Polly had read in school, which Tom said he’d read as well; apparently the classics didn’t change that much in fourteen years. They talked about The Three Musketeers, which was where the quartet had gotten its name.  
  
“I thought it was familiar!” Polly exclaimed when he told her, thinking it was clever. “So then, you must be… not D’Artagnan, right? Perhaps Athos?”  
  
Tom laughed. “No, we didn’t pick characters. We’d thought about it, but we’ve all got our own flaws without ascribing a whole ‘nother set.”   
  
“Oh, that makes sense,” Polly admitted. “Then one of you would have to be the main character. Hmm, do quartets _have_ a leader?”  
  
“Well,” Tom drawled, “I brought the team together, but I wouldn’t call myself the leader. The quartet would be lost without any one of us.”  
  
Polly grinned up at him. “That sounds like something a leader would say.”  
  
“I’m nothing like that,” Tom swore, but Polly noted that he looked pleased at her comment. She remembered how heroic she thought he looked, back when he was wrangling the horse on the London street. She thought he’d wanted someone to notice him, and though it had been quite some time, she was very glad that she finally had the chance to let him see her admiration up close.  
  
They continued on along with the others, riding a few of the rides and visited some of the other attractions. None of them were dating (at least, Polly didn’t _think_ they were? Who in the quartet would have been dating? Tom hadn’t mentioned dating Ann, and Polly rather thought he would have, if they were together, or that she’d have noticed them holding hands or the like), but they went through the tunnel of love anyway, for a lark.  
  
 _‘Or maybe Leslie actually does want to kiss me?’_ Polly thought, when Leslie grabbed her arm and tugged her in. She didn’t know why exactly, because she and Nina and Fiona _had_ been sort of competing over him, but she wasn’t all that excited about the idea. She became kind of tense as she sat down next to Leslie in the little boat, but as it moved slowly through the tunnel and he didn’t make a move on her, she relaxed. He did turn to chat with her, however.  
  
“Too bad Nina and Fiona couldn’t come,” he said conversationally. “Then we’d have had an even number of people for the ride.”  
  
“We _have_ an even number,” Polly said, counting back on them. Yes, six was an even number, last time she checked.  
  
Leslie laughed, like she was just being silly. “Yeah, but then Sam and Ed wouldn’t have to share a boat.”  
  
 _‘Are they?’_ Polly thought, craning her neck to look behind them, but not seeing any other boats, due to the spacing and the tunnel’s curves. If Sam and Ed were sharing, that meant Tom and Ann were in the same boat. Perhaps they really were dating and she was just oblivious? That would probably be… nice for them. They both seemed like nice people.  
  
Leslie found her sudden interest in the other riders amusing. “Don’t worry, we’re not going to lose them. The group obviously loves you too much to run off without saying goodbye.”  
  
Honestly, the thought hadn’t even occurred to Polly, but now that it was there, she had to deny it. “Oh no, they don’t like me _that_ much! They hardly know me!”  
  
“Well you got into their good graces by acting excited about their book,” Leslie said, looking a little smug, perhaps on her behalf.  
  
“I wasn’t _acting,”_ Polly protested. She really had been genuinely interested in the book. It wasn’t every day that you got to meet published authors.  
  
“I know,” Leslie said. “And they could tell too, I’m sure. That’s why they like you so much.” He chuckled a little bit. “Honestly, they might like you a little _too_ much. Now they’ll probably never leave me alone about you.”  
  
Polly cocked her head and stared at Leslie as if she could decipher his meaning visually. “What do you mean by that?”  
  
Leslie looked some combination of uncomfortable and amused as he admitted, “Tom’s been trying to get me to get a girlfriend lately. I thought inviting the three of you, you know, you and Nina and Fiona, that it might throw him off my trail a little. I guess I could _pretend_ to date you.”  
  
Unsure if she was supposed to feel offended or not (but definitely feeling a little bit offended regardless), Polly said, “But you don’t want to _actually_ date me?”  
  
“You’re great, Polly, _really,”_ Leslie said, looking chagrined. “And I would totally date you. Thing is, I’m already sort of seeing someone. Just, it’s a secret.”  
  
Of course Polly was intrigued by that. She’d always loved a good adventure, and mysteries were adventurous by nature. “A secret?” she repeated, feeling a bit honored to have been let into that knowledge. “Goodness, what kind of relationship is it that you’ve got to keep it secret, even from your own uncle?”  
  
Leslie tried to hide his cringe behind a charming grin. “It wouldn’t be much of a secret if I told you, now would it?”  
  
That was sound enough logic, so Polly conceded and agreed that she’d keep his secret, but not necessarily that she would be willing to pretend to date him. That much just seemed too dishonest, especially to the quartet, who Leslie had already said had really taken a liking to her. The most she would agree to was not outright dispelling the assumption that they might have kissed on the tunnel of love.  
  
Once everyone was out of the tunnel, they headed over to the next most interesting attraction, which was the haunted castle. Sam and Ed were casually teasing each other about being too scared, and roped Leslie into the teasing for fun. They egged each other into the castle, and Ann followed after them all with an amused shrug.  
  
“Suppose we ought to follow?” Tom asked Polly, and she frowned consideringly.  
  
“It wouldn’t be very sporting of us not to,” Polly replied, even though she didn’t feel strongly about haunted castles on their own. But Tom seemed a little bit interested in going, if only because his friends had.  
  
They walked through it, periodically commenting on how this-or-that element was maybe not as scary as the creators intended, or actually fairly well done for a carnival ride. But Polly was distracted thinking about her conversation with Leslie. Every so often Tom would look over at her as if he was expecting her to say something, and she knew there was no way he should be able to guess what the two of them had talked about, but it was weighing on her anyway, until finally it spilled out.  
  
“I didn’t kiss Leslie,” she said in a rush. “In the tunnel of love. We just talked.” Tom only raised his eyebrows, so Polly hurried on with an explanation, feeling stupid. “I know that you’re hoping he’ll get a girlfriend, but he’s not interested in me, and really I’m not very interested in him either.”  
  
Guilt flooded her, but less strong than her feeling of relief. Alongside them both was a tingling worry that Tom would judge her, for one reason or another.  
  
“I’m not very surprised,” he said, sounding just a little bit disappointed, in a resigned sort of way. “I’d just hoped he could find someone good to keep by his side, and you seem nice. He’s at… a difficult age. He could use someone to watch out for him. You know, someone who cares about him.” Tom’s line of sight drifted away from Polly’s face as he spoke, to focus on something unseen in the middle distance.  
  
“We’re still friends,” Polly told him, and Tom looked back at her sort of sideways. She could see him thinking that it wasn’t quite what he’d meant, but he shrugged and smiled at her.  
  
“Friends are important too,” he conceded. “One can never have too many people who genuinely care about you, whichever way that may be.”  
  
Polly nodded emphatically, quite in agreement. “And he’s got the four of you,” she said. “It’s nice that you’re so close. I don’t talk to my own aunt but once a year.”  
  
Now it was Tom’s turn to look a little guilty, as he admitted, “I only met Leslie a few years back, to be honest. I, ah, I’d been estranged from my brother for some time, until I’d finally tracked him down. When I found him, I tried to make an effort with his family, even though he remains a bit distant himself. I recommended Wilton College, so I’m glad Leslie seemed to like it.”  
  
“Oh!” Polly said, charmed at the connection. “Then you’re basically the reason we met! If Leslie didn’t go to Wilton, I doubt we’d have become friends. Then I’d probably have never met you or the quartet. That’s some luck!”  
  
“Luck indeed,” Tom replied, with a grin that was only just a little bit fake.  
  
“Say, how did you know about Wilton?” Polly asked, wondering why a Londoner should suggest a school so far away, when there were probably plenty of good schools in the city, and likely at least an acceptable one closer to where Leslie had lived.  
  
“I attended Wilton myself, a few years back,” Tom said. He opened his mouth as if he were about to tell her something else, maybe tales of his time there, but then he closed it without uttering another word, like he’d abruptly changed his mind. He looked uncomfortable for a brief moment before he wiped it from his face. “How do you like _your_ school?” he asked instead.  
  
Polly allowed the change of subject, even though her curiosity had been piqued. “Oh, it’s alright,” she said, and then went on to try to think of things to tell him that didn’t sound childish or embarrassing. There was nothing wrong with her school, or her being _at_ her school, but suddenly she wanted to downplay it as much as possible. “It’s all very normal.” She told him about some of the harder classes she was doing well in, and a few mundane things like the renovation of one of the hallways, and _not_ about the science test she’d failed recently, or how she was considering the drama production. She _did_ tell him about the superstition club she had helped Nina form in their first year though, perhaps because she could pin any immaturity on her friend. Tom seemed genuinely entertained by their shenanigans, letting loose a few surprised barks of laughter. Polly was distracted by the shine in his eyes when he smiled, and she walked straight into a suit of armor.  
  
“Whoops,” Tom said, as he reached out to steady her, and then push the wobbling armor back into place.  
  
“Thanks,” Polly muttered, ducking to hide her blush. If she was lucky, it was too dark in there for Tom to see it anyway.  
  
Back out in the daylight, they rejoined the group, and then soon parted ways. Polly profusely thanked them all for the afternoon, and for the book, which she promised to read immediately. Tom stayed mostly quiet as the three other members of the quartet all told her in various ways that they would love to see her again, whenever they next met with Leslie. Polly wondered if they meant that in a generic way, or if they had bought Leslie’s unspoken story of their fake relationship. He clearly hoped it was the latter, standing close next to Polly in a manner just less intimate than a steady couple might. He grinned at them all and promised he’d bring her along.  
  
At home, Polly got straight to reading. She’d told them she would, after all, and was excited to see what sort of tales the four of them would tell. Mostly they seemed to be science-fiction or fantasy, which she could tell from a quick skim. She started from the first story in the book and got about three pages in before she realized she wasn’t paying attention, and went back to try once more. A second attempt was no better; by page five, her mind had drifted.  
  
 _‘I’m sure they’re very good stories!’_ she thought, feeling bad about not giving them the attention they deserved. But she just kept thinking about Tom, about the things he’d told her as they’d chatted, and his reactions to her own stories, and the way he’d saved her from getting crushed by that suit of armor, his long, thin hand on her arm. He was clearly stronger than he looked. Well of course he was. She already knew that, from the episode with the horse. Somehow that particular scene still felt a bit unreal, but that made meeting the man seem all the more fantastic.  
  
Polly sighed, and decided to give up on the book-- but just for the night. She would devote her full attention to it tomorrow, she told herself. As she readied herself for bed, idle thoughts of the afternoon kept playing in her head, most of them of Tom, but it wasn’t until she was tucked under her covers that it occurred to her: she might have possibly had just the littlest bit of a crush on the man. With an embarrassed, wide smile, she hid her face in the pillow and willed herself to sleep.  
  
In the morning, she had a slightly new perspective on the situation. Some time in the night, she had decided several things. First of all, it was silly to have a crush on Tom. It was just nonsense, not at all logical. Secondly, she was fairly certain there was nothing she could do about it. Feelings had a way of existing whether you liked it or not, and she thought that trying to squash it down might just do more harm than good. So she resolved to let the feeling stay, as long as it didn’t distract her terribly-- especially from reading that book! Tom certainly wouldn’t think very highly of her if she completely neglected to appreciate the gift he’d given her. And so she willed the crush to mind its own business for a little while, as she concentrated on reading.  
  
It was a good book, although some parts were better than others. She’d tried to ignore the authors’ names at the beginning of each one, so as not to give herself an unconscious preference, but even when she knew who’d written which she found herself liking each author’s work almost as well as the others, for all that they had their significant differences. When she was done, she sighed happily, very satisfied, and immediately set to writing a letter to Tom (with instructions to share with the others) about her thoughts on each story, and the collection as a whole. She was sure to thank them again; and she was also sure not to say anything too personal, although those pesky feelings of hers definitely wanted to. The feelings could stay, she had told them, but only as long as they didn’t get in the way of her normal life-- and making a fool of herself (not only to Tom but to his friends as well) was simply not going to happen.  
  
It wasn’t quite an obsession, but she did find herself thinking of that meeting, and especially of Tom, much more often over the next few weeks and months. He would often pop into her head when she didn’t expect it, or when she foolishly thought that whatever she was focused on couldn’t _possibly_ have any connection to him. (The truth was, there was very little in her life that couldn’t trigger thoughts of him in some way.) She took The Three Musketeers out of the library again (though she did not fool herself into thinking this had no connection; it obviously did), and thought that Tom really did remind her of Athos, just as she’d first expected. But upon a second reading, she understood them not wanting to pick characters. That would have unfortunately implied things about them which were either unflattering or untrue, such as one of the quartet being interested in Tom’s ex-wife. Polly laughed at the idea of such a thing. Even if Tom had an ex-wife (an idea that already struck her as absurd, and maybe made her feel a little bristly), none of his friends would be so gauche as to pursue her! Polly didn’t know them very well, but she trusted that both Sam and Ed were too loyal for that.  
  
Surprisingly, when she brought it up at her next meeting with Leslie (after Fiona had recovered from chicken pox and Nina was available), Polly found that she’d been at least partially right, despite her intention _not_ to be. She explained how she’d originally thought the Dumas quartet ought to have Dumas characters (they could have been characters from his other novels, or other ‘Musketeers’ characters, of course, but that wouldn’t have matched them being a four-some), but that she’d changed her mind.  
  
“That does kind of sound like Tom though,” Leslie admitted, after Polly explained who Athos was. (Leslie had not read the book.) Polly’s eyes went wide and her heart beat roughly in her chest for an angry, confused moment, as she confirmed that she had _heard him right,_ but Leslie awkwardly refused to say much more than that, yes, Tom had had a wife, and that they were no longer together. He didn’t mention if Sam or Ed might be pursuing her, but Polly didn’t ask. She was a little sick at the thought.  
  
“What’s this?” Nina asked, sounding like she’d just caught a juicy bit of gossip. She tilted her head at Polly and gave her such a _look._ “Why, _Polly,_ have you taken an interest in an _older man?_ How risque!”  
  
“And Leslie’s uncle too,” Fiona added, though she seemed to feel bad about playing into Nina’s teasing. Polly got the feeling (through her sudden mortification) that where Nina had just latched on like a bloodhound, Fiona was actually curious.  
  
“It’s...!” Polly said, but nothing else would come out of her mouth. She couldn’t in good conscience say that it ‘wasn’t like that’, when that would have been a bald-faced lie, but she wasn’t quite brave enough to say ‘and what of it!’ either, especially since she was still so busy reeling with the new knowledge that Tom had been married. Luckily, Nina didn’t press her much further, when she proved to be no fun to tease, and Fiona only gazed at her ponderously.  
  
Not long after that, Polly received a letter back from Tom, relaying the quartet’s thanks for her compliments and commentary, and a probably-joking comment about using her glowing review in their next book (which was not yet in the works; it existed only as a vague notion that wasn’t quite an inevitability). Tom asked how she was doing, if she’d read anything interesting lately, or if there were any more entertaining shenanigans at school. Polly responded to the best of her ability to sound mature while also not sounding boring, and carefully neglected to ask about Tom’s ex, even though she was morbidly dying to know (which was perhaps a bit redundant, but felt accurate).  
  
They continued correspondence like that over the year. Tom’s letters usually included updates about Sam, Ed, and Ann, and what and where they were playing next. (After Australia they had gotten an itch to travel, but mostly kept relatively local.) Polly’s letters sometimes mentioned Nina or Fiona, because Nina was always doing something silly and Fiona was funny in her own quiet way, but more often contained what little update she had about Leslie. Being so much closer, she saw him more often than Tom did, even if that was not all that often, and Polly sort of felt it was her responsibility, somehow, to keep tabs on the young man where his uncle could not.  
  
She probably only saw Leslie once per month, but it was enough to maintain a loose understanding of his well-being. Polly thought her understanding of him was helped by her knowledge of his ‘secret’, even though she didn’t know the particulars of it. And it seemed to her that he was becoming a little more distant than he had been before; distracted, perhaps. He lost interest in having the three girls fight over him, possibly because he could tell Polly was not really into it, and that Fiona was otherly inclined, but it might also have been because he was becoming serious about this secret relationship of his. Polly couldn’t help drawing comparisons between herself and him, the way she sometimes caught herself forgetting where she was, lost in idle thought about Tom. Her mother had said she seemed dreamy and disquieted at the same time (which was apparently disturbing, according to Ivy’s scowl), and though Polly had huffed and tried to protest, she realized it was probably true. And that was how Leslie was starting to look, which probably didn’t bode well for either of them.  
  
But instead of asking Leslie about his own secret relationship, which she highly doubted he would tell her about, she indulged her own personal curiosity and asked about Tom’s ex. It wasn’t exactly a secret, after all.  
  
“She’s called Laurel,” he told her, looking kind of distant again, like maybe he felt bad for telling what should be Tom’s tale. “She’s part of the Leroy family. Y’know, like Seb Leroy. Have you met him? Rich family, lives in this big house on the other side of town.”  
  
Whenever anyone mentioned a big house, really only one place came to mind, and it was the house she’d crashed the funeral at when she was ten. There was a split second where her logical mind tried to say ‘well that couldn’t be it, obviously’, before she remembered that she’d first seen Tom there. It couldn’t be _that_ much of a coincidence, could it?  
  
“With a big gate and these giant vases inside?” she asked. The vases were the strangest thing she could remember about the house. She remembered thinking Ali Baba could fit most of his forty thieves in them. “That was the funeral I accidentally went to!”  
  
“Yeah, Hunsdon House,” Leslie said, nodding. “I guess the house has been in the family for ages."   
  
It was an awfully grand house, that was for sure. Almost too grand to be in Granny’s neighborhood, Polly thought, but she supposed it had probably been there first, and all the normal houses had grown up around it. It was lucky that it was so near Granny’s though, because it meant that she could go check it out next time she stayed over on a holiday. She meandered down the street until she hit it, and then gazed up at it from outside the great fence.  
  
 _‘I just can’t imagine Tom living here,’_ she thought almost disdainfully. He seemed far too down-to-earth for such a big, opulent house, for all that he professed to being a fan of fairytales which could have taken place there. In particular, Polly imagined Cinderella taking place there, which made her dislike the house even more; she wasn’t very fond of Cinderella. (That girl would have gotten nowhere without her fairy godmother’s help. How was that supposed to be a good moral?)  
  
Despite her initial misgivings, she began to read some of the fairy tales Tom recommended. He’d helpfully sent along a parcel of books with one of the letters, and Polly laughed, imagining that he thought she’d renege on her promise if he didn’t make it _very_ easy for her to get her hands on them. She read each one carefully, trying to see between the lines like Tom had said, but she admitted to herself that there were probably a lot of little things she was missing. Even so, she did understand some of them, and she thought she agreed with Tom’s opinion that they said a lot very quietly. Regardless, she found she liked most of them well enough, even the ones she didn’t quite fully understand, if only because Tom had shared them with her.  
  
About a half a year after their first meeting, Leslie took her along to another outing, this time without bothering to invite Nina or Fiona. Clearly, he had settled on Polly as his camouflage. The outing was a somewhat more formal affair-- a concert of the Dumas Quartet, who had started to become quite popular. Polly had hardly ever heard such music (except for some of Leslie’s, and that was different), but she liked it quite a lot. The sounds they could make with just the four of them were almost startling, and also beautiful. In a way, she thought of it like Tom’s fairy tales: the music seemed to say a lot, even though it didn’t really say anything. (And like the fairy tales, Polly wasn’t quite sure _what_ it was saying, but that it was possibly of great importance, and certainly very deep.)  
  
When they met up afterward, Polly grinned and admitted to the quartet (but especially to Tom), “I tend to think of you in regards to your book so much that I sometimes forget you’re really musicians!”, which they all found very funny.  
  
“A true artist will express himself in any way he can,” Sam said.  
  
“Sometimes that’s groans of frustration,” Ed added, which caused a knowing chuckle to ripple through the group.  
  
Sam’s comment spurred Polly to ask Tom in her next letter if he did any other art too. She fancied the idea that he might be a painter or a sculptor with those long, elegant fingers of his. When he responded, he told her that he had been into photography, once upon a time, but that he hadn’t done it much for quite a while. Photography was not something Polly had ever considered trying, but she started to toy with the idea. There were plenty of scenes throughout her life she thought it would have been nice to be able to capture. Ultimately, however, her mother struck the idea down as being too expensive, and Polly wasn’t _so_ into the idea that she put up much of a fight. Instead she simply told Tom that she would love to see some of his photos. Regrettably, he replied that he really hadn’t kept many.  
  
They continued to write back and forth to each other about the various goings-on in their lives, and when a few months had passed after the concert and Leslie was apparently unable to meet with them, Tom called to invite Polly out with just the five of them. “I’ll come pick you up,” he offered, which was how Polly found that he drove like a maniac. The quartet was eager to know what she thought of the experience, once they arrived.  
  
“It was definitely… exciting,” she told them, though she didn’t tell them that in her mind she likened it to a knight on horseback chasing after (or perhaps being chased by?) a villain.  
  
“He’s gotten a lot better, actually,” Ann said. “It used to be terrifying.”  
  
Tom’s driving might have had Polly on the edge of her seat, but it definitely wasn’t enough to dissuade her from going with him again. He called up again another month or so later, saying that Leslie was otherwise occupied once more but that they would love to see _her,_ if she was available, and Polly happily took them up on the offer, even though (or perhaps especially because) it meant she’d have to be alone in a speeding car with Tom for the greater part of an hour. She loved meeting with the quartet, but she felt most comfortable when in Tom’s presence alone, like she could say most things without fear of judgement-- or at least only judgement from someone who she instinctively felt could do no wrong.  
  
The trend continued, with Leslie always having some reason not to join them, even if they tried to fit their outings to his schedule. After a while, they stopped being surprised, though Tom admitted once, when the two of them were alone, that he was worried about his nephew, concerned he’d gotten into something troublesome.  
  
“But maybe he just doesn’t want to hang around his old uncle,” Tom said with a shrug and a bit of a sigh.  
  
“You’re not _old,”_ Polly replied, and Tom just laughed, seeing it as lip service.  
  
“College boys are very concerned with their image,” he told her with a short huff of laughter. “Anyone past thirty may as well have one foot in the grave.” He paused, grimacing at himself, and then seemed to mentally shake the idea from his head. “Although perhaps the issue is that I’m a relative. I’m sure that’s very ‘uncool’ already.”  
  
Polly wasn’t sure what kind of answer she expected, but she couldn’t help asking, “How old _are_ you?”  
  
“Thirty-one,” he said, a look on his face that was just shy of a laugh. “Are you surprised?”  
  
“No!” she protested, although she sort of was. “I just thought…” What she had ‘just thought’ was that he must be closer to her age, simply by virtue of her liking him. She was acutely embarrassed when she realized what her unconscious mind had decided. “I don’t know what I thought. I mean, it makes sense in a way. You’d have to be a _little_ older to have been married, I suppose.”  
  
“Ah.” Tom swallowed, and Polly tried not to watch his adam’s apple bob up and down. “Leslie told you about that?” Clearly he was the one embarrassed now, though in maybe a different kind of way. Polly didn’t know exactly why.  
  
“Yes,” she admitted, _also_ embarrassed even though it wasn’t her fault. She hadn’t thought it was exactly a secret, though it was obviously a personal bit of detail that perhaps wasn’t polite to gossip about. “Well, you see, I’d reread The Three Musketeers after we’d first met, and I really thought you _did_ remind me of Athos, but that you couldn’t be _too_ much like him, you know. I mentioned it to Leslie and he corrected me and… It was a silly assumption for me to make.”  
  
“No, it’s fine,” Tom said, looking sheepish and sort of down. “I guess I should consider it a compliment that I don’t look like someone who’s been through a divorce.”  
  
 _‘Not exactly,’_ Polly thought. Her own parents came to mind. They both looked miserable, but differently than Tom had, even when she’d first seen him. His was a more profound sort of misery that she’d initially thought might just be an aspect of his personality. Of course, thinking of their first meeting made Polly think of that gigantic house.  
  
“Did you live at Hunsdon House?” she asked, and then bit her lip. “Leslie said your ex-wife lived there, where the funeral was held.”  
  
“Right, where we first met,” Tom said. “Yes, actually. That was just after the divorce, you see. I was just in the process of moving out.”  
  
 _“Oh.”_ Polly nodded. “I guess that’s why you looked so uncomfortable.”  
  
Tom laughed. “Did I? I suppose I must have. Yes, I’m sure that was one of the reasons. Then there was the funeral too, of course. I didn’t know the woman well, but… you know. It’s never fun to be reminded how… fleeting life can be.”  
  
“Yes,” Polly agreed. “That's why we have to live life to the fullest.”  
  
Smiling, Tom said, “Sage advice. Did you read that in a book somewhere?”  
  
“Most books, I think,” Polly told him. “It’s common knowledge! Only I think it ends up in most books as a reminder, because it’s so easy to forget.”  
  
“It certainly is,” Tom said, giving a sigh that Polly liked to think of as full of resolve.  
  
After that, he apparently took the advice seriously. He continued to write to Polly, but she didn’t see him almost at all throughout her senior year. The quartet was working hard to make a name for themselves and record albums, and Tom was doing some of his own projects, both solo and with other musicians. They traveled a little more broadly than the previous year, although to Polly’s knowledge, they didn’t didn’t leave the continent. She got postcards from Germany and France, and letters about the beautiful scenery. Polly quietly wished Tom was still into photography so he could send her his own pictures instead of just stock photographs, but she enjoyed them all the same. Anything he sent her was precious, not least of all because it showed she was on his mind, even while he was out there living his best life.  
  
‘I really want to experience life while I still can,’ he wrote in one of his letters, and Polly though it sounded rather morbid, but as he wasn’t distancing himself from her she wasn’t concerned. She was just glad he was really applying himself, and that he seemed cheerful enough. Every so often he would call her on the phone, in between the quartet’s travels (though most of the time it was to apologize that they didn’t have time to go out anywhere before running off on their next adventure), and he usually had a smile in his voice and something pleasant to say. Even so, Polly could tell that there was still that strange intrinsic melancholy underneath it all, and she wondered where it came from and how it could be so strong as to withstand Tom’s apparent joy at his successes and travels.  
  
Their jaunting about the continent calmed around the time Polly graduated from high school, and the quartet took her out to dinner in celebration. Afterwards, they all went back to Tom’s flat to play a small, private concert for her-- a piece they’d written with her in mind. They wanted her opinion on it before they incorporated into their usual set. Of course she loved it, and she was very touched. On top of that, she was excited to see where Tom lived now. Not unexpectedly, the apartment fit him much better than Hunsdon House could ever possibly have, in Polly’s opinion. It was comfortable and warm and just cluttered enough, and she simply couldn’t imagine hosting a funeral there.  
  
Not long after that, when the elation of graduation had finally faded, she got to work on her university admissions forms, which of course she called Tom about. He was clever and wise in useful ways and would never pressure her to take any courses she was uninterested in (unlike her mother, who really thought she ought to pick whatever had the most utility if she wasn’t going to just get a job like a normal person). She was surprised, however, when Tom admitted that he’d never been to university himself.  
  
“I, ah, married rather young,” he said, and she could hear him shuffling on the other side of the phone line, “and the relationship… commanded a lot of my time, we’ll say. I thought of going after the divorce, but I’d already had a job set up with the Philharmonic. I’m afraid I won’t be of much use to you.”  
  
“I mostly know what I want to do anyway,” Polly told him. “But do you think I could come over to discuss having you as a reference?” She was hopeful that he would say yes; he was quite the respectable non-family acquaintance, after all, and though perhaps a teacher would have given a more predictable recommendation, Polly was sure Tom would have a much more unique letter for her. Admittedly, she also wanted to see him again.  
  
He agreed to it with only a very little protesting, and picked her up a few days later. At his flat, they started with tea, then went over her paperwork, and discussed her ideas for major, despite Tom’s supposed inability to be of much help. He commended her for choosing Literature, as it was, of course, his second favorite subject.  
  
“Well, it’s largely thanks to you,” she told him. “I don’t think I’d have really gotten into it if it weren’t for your influence, and your suggesting fairy tales. Since I’ve started reading them more, I’ve realized that they’re very formative for most modern fiction.”  
  
“I thought you’d find some use in them,” Tom said, clearly pleased that she’d taken to the stories.  
  
Before leaving to take her home, Tom presented her with a large framed picture. It was a photograph of a field at dusk, with a fire and billowing smoke. “I wanted to give this to you,” he said. “You said you wanted to see some of my photography. This is the only one I still have. If you’d like it, consider it a graduation gift. And a wish for your future success.”  
  
“I love it,” she murmured, more quietly than she’d intended, as she gazed down upon it. It was a wonderfully mysterious picture, and she thought for sure that it should inspire someone to write a book some day.  
  
Overwhelmed by emotions she’d only barely repressed until this very point, Polly leaned up and kissed Tom. She didn’t pull him down to her, her arms full of the framed photo, but for a very short second it felt like gravity weighed a little extra heavily on him and he leaned into her. Then the moment was over, and she was back on the flats of her feet and he was standing straight, and she realized she might have imagined it.  
  
Tom just laughed. “Well it’s not _that_ great of a photograph, but I’m glad you like it,” he joked, and then led the way out to the car, where Polly sat in a bit of a daze, the picture sitting awkwardly in her lap. She glanced over to him, only slightly aware that her mouth was not quite fully closed, but it was difficult for her to process exactly what she was thinking or what she thought _he_ might be thinking, and so she didn’t.  
  
It wasn’t until she got home that she realized what exactly had happened: she’d taken him entirely off guard with that kiss. Though she hadn’t exactly expected any particular sort of response, she realized now that she had expected _something,_ some kind of acknowledgement of her feelings, and very possibly a declaration of his own. She understood that those feelings might not align, but from every book she’d ever read and every movie she’d ever seen, she knew there was supposed to be some sort of conversation afterward (unless there was more kissing, which there had not been).  
  
The next time Tom picked her up to have lunch with the group, the apology exploded from Polly in fits and starts like a backfiring motor. “I’m sorry. For kissing you before. Without warning.”  
  
“I don’t hold it against you,” Tom replied, cheerful but a little bit fake. “I’m sure you didn’t mean anything by it.”  
  
Polly bristled. How could he think that? How could he think Polly could just… _not mean anything by it?_ “But I did,” Polly told him, annoyed. “That’s not what I meant by my apology, not at all. I only meant I’m sorry that it came from nowhere. I… I’m sure the timing could have been more… appropriate.”  
  
Tom smiled uneasily, though it was obvious he meant it to seem casual. “It was just a little more enthusiastic of a response than I would have expected. ‘Thank you’ would have worked just fine.”  
  
“It wasn’t only in thanks!” Polly said, frustrated with him and how purposefully obtuse he was being. “I did very much appreciate the photograph, but that was just the last straw. I’d been holding back from kissing you for ages, you know!”  
  
A noise like an aborted sigh fell out of Tom’s mouth, and he tried very hard not to look at her, which was probably easy, since he was driving. “Oh, Polly, I’m really flattered,” he said, sounding like he’d carefully picked and second-guessed each word in a very short time frame. “But you don’t want to get involved with someone like me.”  
  
Polly gaped at him. “I really don’t know what you mean by that,” she said. “You’re quite respectable! I came to you for my referral for that reason, didn’t I? You’re talented and smart and funny and kind. I can’t see a single thing about you that would make me uninterested in you!”  
  
“Okay, it isn’t that simple,” Tom admitted, his brows drawn down over his eyes in a great sad swoop. He opened his mouth as if to explain, but he didn’t seem able to.  
  
Sighing, Polly just resisted grabbing his arm; he was driving, so he had an excuse for maybe not giving her his full attention. “But it _can_ be simple, if you’ll just tell me. If you really don’t want me to kiss you again, say so and I won’t.” It was difficult to even promise such a thing, but she really did like and respect him, and if he actually was not at all interested in her, then she would treat what he told her with the utmost of importance.  
  
But he didn’t say quite what she needed to hear in order to achieve any amount of closure. “I just think it’s a bad idea,” he told her. He didn’t say ‘sorry’, but he sounded sorry.  
  
She nodded, accepting his opinion at face value, but she was still far too smitten with him and had threaded his existence too tightly into her life to really let her affection for him go entirely. Though she knew she could handle not kissing him (she’d handled it well enough for the past few years, at least), the idea of separating herself from him was physically hurtful. “Please don’t try to keep me away though,” she said quietly, softly pleading. “You know I’ve come to care about you, a-and the quartet of course, quite a lot!”  
  
“Of course,” Tom said, both looking and sounding very relieved that Polly was (implicitly) agreeing not to pursue him. “You’re a dear friend of ours. I’d never hear the end of it from the others, if I were to chase you off. And I wouldn’t do that.”  
  
“I’m glad to hear it,” Polly replied, melting back into her seat in her own relief. Silently bearing her crush (or whatever it had become in three years, because she felt it had definitely grown with the rest of her) would be difficult, but never seeing Tom again would be agonizing. She wanted to cry from just the idea of it-- mixed with her other tumultuous emotions, of course. “And you don’t need to chase me off anyway,” she added with a very frail joking smile. “I’ll probably be so busy with university that I won’t have time to bother you, even if you wanted me to.”  
  
“We’ll make time,” Tom promised gently, and Polly thought it was probably just to reassure her, but it did. It was enough that Tom still at least seemed to want to be friends. It would have to _be_ enough.  
  
When they parted again later that evening, there was a lingering tension between them, but they seemed to have reached a somewhat-unspoken agreement, the terms of which were not _exactly_ clear but got the point across well enough. Polly went on with her school plans, and Tom continued his solo performances along with his work with the quartet. And Polly did indeed end up being busy with Oxford and the whole new environment that went along with it, but she still made time to meet up with Tom and the quartet whenever possible, periodically bringing Fiona along as well. She was as likeable as they were, so they all got along perfectly well, and her presence helped Polly focus on something other than Tom (and deflected from the tension between she and him, which she knew the rest of the quartet would notice, if she wasn’t careful).  
  
Oddly though, he started to become distant, and Polly had to wonder why. Had she really thrown him for such a loop with her confession? Or was something else wrong? He reminded her of how Leslie had started to act a few years ago, before she’d begun to lose contact with him. (She did still see Leslie from time to time, but they weren’t as close as they’d been then, and she actually felt a bit guilty about that. Hadn’t she said she’d be there for him if he needed her? That promise hadn’t really been relevant, when he never seemed to need her. She hoped he was doing okay these days.)  
  
It was weird, because she still got together for the occasional lunch or tea with Tom, when the rest of the quartet was busy, and each time he seemed genuinely happy to see her, but she would always catch him giving her somewhat wistful looks. She would almost bet that he really did want to see if there could be something more between them, but he was holding back for some reason she couldn’t understand. Was it because his past relationship was simply that bad? She would hope he knew that Polly wouldn’t be like that; she wanted to be with him, but she would never be controlling, or, or however his ex was that had left such a scar on him.  
  
She was just at a loss for how to deal with the situation. Of course she could let it go on like this, but aside from her own vague feeling of misery, it was obvious that Tom wasn’t content either, and _if_ it had anything to do with her, or _them,_ or _their feelings,_ then, well, she wanted to resolve that. And if it didn’t have anything to do with that, then she wanted to know that he was really satisfied with their relationship so she could go on trying to help with whatever else it was. But how could she even bring it up, when he looked so forlorn all the time?  
  
She brought it up during a visit with Granny, when she asked Polly what had her sighing so much.  
  
“It’s just… this _person_ I like,” she began, being a little vague because she thought Granny might not entirely approve of the fact that Tom was _a bit_ older than her.  
  
“Your Mr. Lynn?” Granny guessed (or perhaps more accurately _intuited;_ Granny never guessed). “Don’t look at me like that. You’ve mentioned him before.”  
  
Polly thought of protesting that she’d mentioned other boys before. Well, Leslie, at least. But there was no use lying to Granny, and she didn’t want to anyway. It wouldn’t help when she was trying to figure things out.  
  
“So, what’s wrong with him?” Granny asked, always straight to the point. Polly really appreciated that, even when it was a little embarrassing.  
  
“Well, I _think_ he likes me too. At least, it seems like he does. But he doesn’t want to talk about it. All he’d say was that it was a bad idea.”  
  
Granny hummed. “Maybe it is. There could be some reason behind it. How much do you know about this man?”  
  
“A good bit!” Polly said, a little offended at the implication that she didn’t know Tom or that he could be some dangerous sort of person or something. “We’ve known each other for years. We send letters back and forth all the time!”  
  
But Granny just said, as if it was an irrefutable truth, “Everybody has their secrets, even if you think you know them well.”  
  
Polly _hmph_ ed. “That’s the problem! I’m sure he has secrets, but how am I supposed to just guess at them? I can’t know how he really feels unless he tells me.”  
  
“There’s your answer then,” Granny said with a nod. “Ask him. If he values your relationship, then he ought to tell you.”  
  
That was logical enough, but Polly worried a little bit that if she asked he might actually decide that he _didn’t_ value their relationship enough to explain whatever was plaguing him. And even if he did, that still left the task of asking. But Granny was rarely wrong, so Polly took her advice to heart, and near the end of the semester she asked Tom to lunch to discuss it. (Ostensibly it was just to catch up, as usual, but she wasn’t going to scare him off by telling him she wanted to discuss anything so serious.)  
  
“Can we… talk?” she asked, as they waited on their sandwiches and chips.  
  
“I imagined we would,” Tom said with a teasing smile, but she could see in his eyes that he wasn’t actually dense enough not to get what she was saying.  
  
She waited until they’d gotten their food and sat down at a little table in the corner of the restaurant’s courtyard, where they had some semblance of privacy. Then she let them eat for a few minutes before bringing it up; she didn’t want the food to go to waste, and there was always the chance that one or both of their appetites would be ruined.  
  
“I really wanted to respect what you said before,” she began. “About us. But every time you look at me, I can’t help but think there really might be something there, if only you would let it. And I think you would _like_ to let it. I don’t understand why you _won’t._ It is… Am I really too young for you?” That last thought was not something he had ever said to her, but it was the only half-logical thing she could think of.  
  
“No, no,” he protested, setting his food down and pushing it further into the middle of the table, as if trying to rid himself of distractions. “Rather, that isn’t _only_ it. It’s complicated. My ex-wife, Laurel; she was some years older than me. And it didn’t work out between us, but I know it was for different reasons. It’s… not just that, Polly.”  
  
“Then what is it?” she asked, smiling imploringly. “Maybe it’s something we can fix?”  
  
Tom shook his head. “I’m afraid not,” he said. “My past relationship…” He took a breath and held it for a moment while he seemed to search for the right explanation. “It left me unfit for future relationships. Please understand. I simply can’t promise you anything, going forward.”  
  
“I’m not looking for any sort of promise!” Polly crumpled up a napkin in her fist, trying not to imagine that it was Tom’s shirt. “I just want to try! I feel that I’m meant to be in your life, in some important manner. Why should I have seen you over and over again if it wasn’t _important?”_  
  
But Tom was not swayed by Polly’s romantic logic. “Not everything is for a reason,” he told her sadly. “Sometimes people meet for no reason, and sometimes people die for no reason. It’s not like it is in fairy tales. Not every word has meaning, and not every ending makes sense, let alone the sense you want it to make.”  
  
“But aren’t you supposed to read between the lines?” Polly tried. “To find the true meaning in it?”  
  
Tom didn’t even try to refute her. “Please, Polly, don’t,” he said simply, looking so very tired. “It’s just a waste of your time. If I _could_ give this a chance, I would. Just… believe that, and let it be enough.”  
  
Polly could feel the anger welling up in her, her jaw trembling, because she didn’t understand _why._ But she tried to calm that emotion; looking into Tom’s eyes, she saw that they were still so genuinely sad, much more than she’d seen them since very early on, possibly as early as the funeral. He looked very lost, like he was in that labyrinth of his and could see the exit just through a crack in the wall. She swallowed down a few traitorous tears and took his hand, which he allowed.  
  
“Whatever is stopping you, I really do think we could get through it together,” she told him, relishing the feel of his hand in hers, knowing she likely wouldn’t get a chance at such intimacy again. “I’ll be waiting, whenever you decide to accept my help.”  
  
“You might be waiting a very long time,” Tom said, though he squeezed her hand before letting it go.  
  
It wasn’t what Polly would call a satisfactory conclusion, but it was something, and it would have to hold her over until… well, until Tom said otherwise. She might have dwelled on it and let it affect her mood, but in the end she didn’t really have time. Finishing the semester left her too busy to see him or even talk to him much. In her scant free time, she did think of him, and it was mostly to wonder how long she should wait for him, or if perhaps this was one of those situations where good things did _not_ come to those who sat around and hoped for a windfall. She wasn’t going to give up on him; indeed, she couldn’t. So her only options were to continue on with waiting (as she’d grudgingly said she would), or solve the mystery somehow.  
  
During summer break, she stayed at Granny’s house (as her mother’s relationship with David had finally blown, and she was extra unpleasant to be around), which aided in Polly's eventual decision to boldly march herself over to Hunsdon House, with the intention of asking Laurel for any insight into Tom. Without having even met the woman, Polly was fairly sure she didn’t like her, simply by virtue of her past with Tom, but she had potential as a valuable source of information, and at this point Polly was getting a bit desperate. So she approached the big house, let herself in through the big gate (which was not locked. Was it usually?), and went up to the door, where she gave a solid few knocks.  
  
Two things shocked her quite badly when the woman opened the door and replied that, yes, she _was_ Laurel. First and foremost was that Leslie was there, practically hanging on the beautiful, elegant woman. Second, which didn’t really shock Polly so much as thread itself uncomfortably deep into her mind as something she maybe _should_ be scared of, was that Laurel looked practically _her_ age! Hadn’t Tom said that she was _older_ than him? And he was in his thirties. This woman didn’t look anywhere near her thirties or (god forbid) forties.  
  
Leslie seemed at least as shocked as she was, his face snapping from a dopey sort of look to complete full awareness in one short moment that was comically drawn out in Polly’s mind. “Polly! What are you doing here?”  
  
“I, I, um,” Polly said. She gestured vaguely back toward the street. “I live down the street. I mean, right now I do. At my grandmothers. I’m looking for her cat! Mintchoc. She’s gotten out and I was wondering if maybe someone had seen her?”  
  
It wasn’t a very smooth lie, but it seemed good enough to save her. Leslie straightened his clothes and rushed right out the door. “I’ll help you look,” he said, and they both glanced back over their shoulders at Laurel. The woman looked a little bit suspicious, but she nodded them on and went back inside while they pretended to search the yard.  
  
“Leslie, I’m surprised at you!” Polly found herself hissing as soon as they were far enough away. She didn’t know exactly why she was bothered, except that it was probably on Tom’s behalf. “This couldn’t be, could it? That secret relationship you told me about?”  
  
He seemed taken aback and timid for just a moment before he gathered himself and blustered, “Don’t judge, Polly! I know you have feelings for my uncle, and he’s plenty old for you.”  
  
“That’s got nothing to do with it!” Polly argued back. “Did you think about how he’d feel if he found out?”  
  
Leslie crossed his arms defensively. “He already knows.”  
  
A little bit of the fight bled out of Polly, though what was left turned rock-hard. “So that’s why you stopped seeing the quartet,” she guessed (or perhaps more accurately, _intuited._ She wasn’t as good as Granny, but when she knew something, she knew it).  
  
Frowning, Leslie said, “I know Tom thinks he’s trying to help me, just because it didn’t work out for him. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to end the same way with me.”  
  
Polly became frustrated. She really did care about Leslie, but he was being so blind! Didn’t he know his uncle at all? “Well maybe it _will_ be different for you,” she said with a huff, “and for your sake I hope so, because she left him so _broken_ he can’t even _consider_ loving someone again! He deserves far better than that! And so do you.”  
  
Leslie’s defensive posture loosened some. “Is that how it is?” he asked, more gently. “He won’t return your feelings? I thought maybe you two were just hiding it.”  
  
“There’s nothing _to_ hide,” Polly said sullenly. “He’ll hardly speak to me anymore.”  
  
“Maybe because he’s leaving soon,” Leslie mentioned, sounding almost casual about it. At Polly’s shocked face, he added, “Laurel told me. I guess he’s moving. America or somewhere.”  
  
The only word Polly could possibly use to explain her feelings then was betrayal. “He is?” she asked, hating how tiny she sounded. “He didn’t tell me.”  
  
“Probably didn’t want to have to say goodbye,” Leslie said with a shrug, and a sorry glance towards Polly.  
  
She went back home to Granny’s house then, feeling defeated and confused. She’d thought Tom cared for her, and yet he was going to leave without even saying goodbye? Was that something someone did when they liked you? Was that his way of protecting his own feelings? Even if it was, it wasn’t right! He couldn’t just disappear like that, without a word of warning! She tried calling his flat, but she only got the message machine. She called the rest of the quartet too, but none of them answered. Sulkily, she gave up and flopped down on her bed, hoping that a few moments of peace could sort all of this out. It didn’t, unsurprisingly, but it gave her enough clarity to try doing anything else, instead of just wallowing in self-pity. She decided to reread the quartet’s old book of short stories, for something to do that both was and wasn’t related to her current drama. Amusingly, she couldn’t help but relate to Ed’s story, about the person with the two sets of memories. She felt jumbled and confused inside too, like there was something she should know, but didn’t. Like, for example, what on earth was going on inside Tom Lynn’s head.  
  
There wasn’t as much time to dwell on it as Polly’s flustered subconscious wanted. Soon she was heading back to Oxford, to move into the apartment she was renting for the year with Fiona, so she had to gather her things for the move. Books, clothes, odds and ends. Then there was the photograph Tom had given her, in a place of honor above her bed. She stared at it for a long moment. Maybe she should just leave it here? Sometimes she felt that things like this were like people, that they wanted to find a home and not be unceremoniously carted from one place to the next. This wall suited the photo. Perhaps it would be rude to displace it. But in the end, it was something that was dear to her (when she was not second-guessing in a fit of melancholy) so she climbed up on the bed and took it down. Of course then the whole thing tumbled from her grasp and shattered noisily on the floor.  
  
Granny rushed it. “What’s wrong?” she asked, not panicked but only as alert as shattering glass _should_ make a person. “Ah, I see. Let me get a broom before Mintchoc decides to play with the pieces. Don’t pick them up barehanded, Polly!”  
  
Polly dutifully waited, balancing on the squishy mattress like she was between jumps, until Granny could get back and sweep up most of the mess. Then she got down and tried to carefully extricate the photograph from the ruins of the frame, hoping it wasn’t hurt.  
  
“What is _this?”_ she wondered aloud when she found a hank of hair hidden behind the frame. How unusual! She tilted her head at Granny. “Granny, have you ever heard of people putting _hair_ behind photo frames?”  
  
“Can’t say I know anything about that,” Granny admitted, carefully eyeing the locks. “But it looks like witchcraft to me. Where did you say you got this from?”  
  
“It was given to me by Thomas Lynn,” Polly said, a bit defensive and still quite mystified.  
  
Granny nodded, seeming almost impatient. “Yes, the young man you like. And where did he get it?”  
  
Polly frowned. “He took it himself.”  
  
“Did he now?” Granny looked thoughtful, staring at the hair to the point where Polly imagined she could see into its soul. “And do you suppose this hair is his?”  
  
Well that hadn’t occurred to Polly, even though she now thought it seemed rather obvious. “It looks like it might be,” she said, noting that it _was_ his particular shade of pale ash-blonde that she’d initially taken as grey.  
  
Granny hummed, then left the room for a moment, returning with a different picture frame about the same size. “If it’s important to you, let’s put that photo in a different frame. And throw away whatever you found underneath. No, bury it; I don’t like the idea of it being burned.”  
  
Polly was a little uneasy, but she gathered it up into a bag like Granny instructed. Despite claiming not to know, Granny had a good sense for this kind of thing, and her instincts usually proved reliable. “Do you really think he was involved in witchcraft?”  
  
“I can’t claim to know,” Granny said, shaking her head. She really did say that a lot. “But this close to Halloween, it’s better not to take chances.”  
  
It might not have amounted to anything, but after her recent run-in with Leslie, Polly rather agreed. It was better not to throw caution to the wind, when that wind seemed liable to change direction at any moment.  
  
The next day, Fiona’s family came to pick her up, and Polly was caught in contemplation for the whole long ride. Of course Fiona noticed. She was always surprisingly aware too.  
  
“What’s bothering you?” she asked quietly, not wanting to invite into the conversation whoever was in the front seat.  
  
“You know Tom?” she asked, as if there was any chance that Fiona _didn’t_ know exactly who she was talking about. They’d met a few times, but even if they hadn’t, Fiona would certainly know _of_ Tom, from the way Polly talked about him all the time.  
  
“Of course. What about him.”  
  
“I heard from Leslie that he’s moving to America,” Polly said, trying not to sound despondent.  
  
Fiona gave her a smile that was a little wilder than her usual, a sort of playful and shocked all at once. “And he’s not taking you with him?”  
  
“He hasn’t even told me,” Polly said with a grimace. “I tried calling him, but he won’t answer. None of his friends will either. Maybe they’ve already left?”  
  
Fiona laughed, not at Polly but at herself. “Well, you could always chase after him,” she suggested, alluding to the time she’d followed a German businessman home when they were just in high school. It was not her crowning moment of good decisions, but it was certainly an example of foolhardy bravery. Maybe… Polly thought. Maybe if she wanted a chance with Tom, she needed to be brave. Caution had only gotten her so far.  
  
But there was definitely a problem with the idea. “Oh I would, if I had any idea where he’d gone. Or _if_ he’d gone. He could just be avoiding me.”  
  
“Try going to his house?” Fiona suggested. It was a sight less drastic than following him to another country, so Polly nodded. They were going to be busy setting up their new place that week, but she decided she would go when things calmed down after Halloween.  
  
The next day delivered a stroke of luck, and changed Polly’s plans dramatically. She got a call from Leslie, who had tracked down her phone number because he felt bad about how things had gone before. “We’re all going to see Tom off on Halloween evening. I know you wanted to see him one last time. I thought it was only fair to let you know.”  
  
She thanked him and though she didn’t exactly forgive him for what she considered a very bad decision in dating Laurel, she hoped he knew that there were no hard feelings. She copied down the address of the train station where she could hope to find Tom on Halloween, and returned to the essay she was writing. The waiting was unbearable, but she’d waited so long for him already that two more days shouldn’t matter much.  
  
“Do you want me to go with you?” Fiona asked when Halloween arrived.  
  
Polly considered it, but ultimately turned down the offer. There was already likely to be an audience of some sort, and she didn’t need to make a complete fool of herself in front of even more people. Anyway, there was a real chance that she’d be following him wherever he ended up going, and it wouldn’t do to have someone try to convince her not to be rash. (Not that she thought _Fiona_ would, but still.)  
  
 _‘This all feels so strange,’_ she thought as she made her way to the train station. There had to be something going on, even if that was simply Tom being incorrigibly cowardly and refusing to make a clean cut with her. It truly felt like there was more afoot, but if she could only see Tom one more time, Polly was sure she could figure it out.  
  
And then there he was, walking into the depot, followed by the rest of the quartet, all looking gloomy in the damp late-October weather, under the harsh street lights. Polly dashed forward and caught him just as he was getting on the train. “Tom, wait!” she cried, grabbing onto his arm.  
  
He turned, an almost surprising amount of surprise showing on his face, as if for some reason he really hadn’t expected to see her there, not in his wildest dreams.  
  
“Polly! Why on earth are you here?”  
  
“I came to see you, obviously!” she shouted, full of relief at catching him and terror that he might break away again. “You’re really leaving?”  
  
“Yes,” he admitted, his face downturned. “And, I don’t think I’ll ever be back. Polly, I’m sorry. I wish it could be different, but our paths simply don’t align.”  
  
Polly gaped at him. “You can’t decide that for me!” she said. “My path is wherever I lay it! Why can’t it be at your side?”  
  
Tom seemed to choke back a sigh. “Your place is in school, learning and creating a future for yourself. You’re smart. You’ll make something good of it.” He cleared his throat; it sounded phlegmy and tight. “I’m glad I got to know you. But this is goodbye.”  
  
He was planning to leave it at that, Polly could tell, but _she_ couldn’t. Without further hesitation she surged forward and kissed him; to hell with it being a ‘bad idea’. If this was the last she would ever see him, it didn’t matter anyway.  
  
The surprise was that when she wrapped her arms around him, he did the same, pulling her close in a way that seemed instinctive and desperate, and they stumbled backward into the train car, at which moment the door closed and left them trapped on a new path that was, at least for the time being, irreversible. Polly couldn’t say she was exactly disappointed, although when Tom pulled away from her and looked down at her nearly in horror, she figured he wasn’t quite pleased with it himself.  
  
The quartet were a little bothered as well. “Um, Tom, did we mean to bring Polly with us?” Ed asked.  
  
Tom dropped his head into his hands to stifle a groan. “Oh, Polly,” he said sadly. “I didn’t want you to get dragged into this!”  
  
“I don’t even know what ‘this’ _is,”_ Polly replied, annoyed, but realizing she had just crossed a line, and that it was a line Tom had been trying to keep her on the other side of for maybe a year or more.  
  
Ann shook her head. “Maybe you should have just let her in from the start.”  
  
Glaring at her, Tom said, “It’s bad enough that the three of you couldn’t just let me go.”  
  
“Of course we couldn’t,” Sam said, as if it were obvious (which, well, it _was)._ “That’s why Polly’s here too, isn’t it?”  
  
For a moment, Polly was a little embarrassed to be put in the spotlight and asked about her feelings, but she pushed through. This was no time to falter, or to pretend that things were not as significant as they felt deep within her heart. “I know I’m probably just a nuisance,” she said to Tom, bowing her head slightly in shame for which she was really not at all repentant, before locking her gaze on the wide eyes behind his glasses. “But I wasn’t willing to lose you forever without a fight, or at least an explanation.”  
  
“Polly, I really _can’t_ explain,” Tom told her, looking sorry. He glanced over at the others, who all looked silently apologetic as well.  
  
Polly huffed, agitated. “Fine, then. A fight it is, I guess.”  
  
“That may be the only way,” Tom admitted. He glanced out the window, and Polly followed his line of sight, shocked to find that the view showed bright daylight, which it could not possibly do if they were still living on the earth she knew. Finally, it all began to click.  
  
“...Where is this train taking us?” she asked as steadily as she could manage. She hoped Tom could answer that much, if he could not explain the rest.  
  
“To see Laurel,” he told her, looking frightened and alone and lost once more-- but the sort of frightened and alone and lost that one can only be in the middle of a crowd, flanked on all sides by people who cannot help you find your way.  
  
“And are you really going to America?” she asked doubtfully.  
  
Tom said nothing, but he looked to Ann, and Polly turned to her as well. “We’re not going to America,” Ann answered carefully.  
  
Polly looked around at those assembled, and found they all looked like guilty dogs. ‘We love you; please don’t be angry for what we’ve done.’ “...And are you planning to come back?”  
  
Again, Tom turned to Ann, who replied in his stead, _“We_ might.”  
  
Unfortunately, Polly was fairly sure she understood what Ann was saying, and what she wasn’t saying. It caused a shiver to run down her spine and through the rest of her. Lastly, there was one more question she wanted an answer to, even though she didn’t know if it would explain anything important. She asked Tom, “Did you put the spell on the photograph you gave me?”  
  
“A spell?” Tom’s brow wrinkled. “I… don’t know anything about that,” he said, and for the first time he really did seem not to have any clue. But he didn’t scoff at the idea, or try to assert that magic wasn’t real or anything of the sort. That alone told Polly quite a lot. “Did you find something like that?”  
  
“It might have been,” Polly said, as she couldn’t say with any confidence whether it truly was. “There was a lock of your hair behind the frame, before I, um, accidentally broke the glass. You didn’t put it there?”  
  
“No,” Tom told her, shaking his head. “My brother had it framed for me. I never thought to look back there.”  
  
Polly hummed. “Peculiar.”  
  
Looking off into the distance, Tom said, “Maybe not as peculiar as I would like.” He said no more on the topic, and the train car went quiet as they all settled in to await whatever fate laid before them.  
  
Soon enough, they came to their destination, and Polly was only a little surprised to see that it was Hunsdon House, the big expensive house where Laurel lived. It was _some_ version of it, anyway, with all the same fancy molding around the windows and eaves, and the same well-manicured garden, but it clearly existed entirely independent of the neighborhood where more mundane houses like Granny’s lived. The five of them disembarked and walked up the long path to the house, where a party of Laurel and all her friends were waiting. Leslie was there as well, at Laurel’s side. Did he know about all this, Polly wondered?  
  
“Welcome home, Tom,” Laurel said, in a voice that made Polly feel a bit sick. Her cold eyes tracked over to the quartet, setting up their instruments behind Tom, and then to Polly, standing at his side. “Leslie, why is your little friend here?” she asked, her eyes still locked on Polly.  
  
“I’ve come to help Tom,” Polly said, willing her voice not to tremble.  
  
“Have you now?” Laurel asked, a little bit amused. “Help him with what?”  
  
Polly tried to sound confident as she responded, “Well, with overcoming his past,” but she knew it was obvious to Laurel (and perhaps everyone else, though she doubted that any of their opinions mattered) that she had next to no clue what she was doing.  
  
Laurel laughed. “You have no idea what that even means, do you?” She looked at Tom and said chidingly, “Oh, Tom. So helpless that you’ve gotten this young woman involved in something she doesn’t understand. Well, it’s a little late to be rebellious, dear.”  
  
“On the contrary,” Tom replied, with a melancholy sort of smile and a long, searching glance at Polly, like he was trying to make sure he understood her correctly, or was perhaps a little surprised that she existed at all. “She decided this all on her own, and I’m honored that she did.”  
  
 _“Are you?”_ Polly asked, her mood lifting quite suddenly. “I thought you were upset that I’d come!”  
  
“I was,” Tom said. “But only because I was trying-- I was _hoping_ to protect you. But selfishly, I’m actually rather glad you’re here.”  
  
Polly could practically feel the stars in her eyes as she grinned at him. “I do wish you’d been selfish earlier!”  
  
Apparently, Laurel didn’t like that they weren’t paying attention to her. She sneered at the two of them. “Hmph. You think she can save you?” she asked Tom condescendingly.  
  
Tom gave a grimacing smile. “If I’d thought so, I might have tried to make it happen,” he admitted. “I don’t know if she can, but knowing that she’s willing to try will at least make my death seem less meaningless.”  
  
Polly’s heart and stomach both plummeted, and all her hairs stood on end (the ones which had resisted standing so far, anyway; the others had all gone on alert at various points through the night). _“Death?!_ She means to kill you? Goodness!” She turned to Laurel and shook her head, gaping at the woman. “Divorcing him wasn’t enough? You hate him that much?”  
  
“Quite the opposite,” Laurel said in a lofty tone. “It’s because I love him so dearly, I mean to keep him with me always.”  
  
Every ounce of Polly’s imagination went to work, and she disliked everything it gave her. Just _what_ was Laurel implying? Truthfully, she didn’t want to know. She just wanted to avoid it, whatever it was.  
  
Laurel seemed to become bored very quickly. “Now, Tom, I think we’ve had enough interruption.” She flicked her hand at him, as if dismissing a servant, and like he was compelled by some invisible force, Tom turned and faced a strange little pond that sat behind them. Slowly he began to walk towards it. Polly didn’t know what it meant, but she could guess well enough that it was no good. The quartet began to play, apparently their way of doing what they could for him. Polly didn’t know what _she_ could do. She didn’t understand the rules of this strange game like everyone else seemed to!  
  
“Stop, Tom, you don’t have to do this!” she shouted, following after him.  
  
“I’m afraid I do, Polly,” he said, barely managing to look at her over his shoulder. He was stiff, like a toy soldier, and every action he took seemed immeasurably difficult.  
  
“But… what if you tried not to?” she asked, a bit desperate.  
  
Tom stared at her, his eyes wide and frightened and just on the verge of completely hopeless. “What good would it do?” he asked sullenly. “She owns me. I have to do what she compels me to.”  
  
Polly grabbed his hand, and then his arm, and tried tugging him back, but he was oddly solid for a man with such ostrich-like proportions. “How do you know?” she asked, grunting as she tugged fruitlessly on him. “Because she said? Because that’s the rules of the game?”  
  
Suddenly it hit her like a ton of bricks. That was _exactly_ right. He’d been told what was going to happen (and it was clear now that he’d known all along, that _that_ was why he looked so alone all the time), and Laurel had made it seem inevitable, and Tom hadn’t ever thought that it could be any other way-- that Laurel (whoever she was, _whatever_ she was) had made the game, and she’d made the rules, and it must be played her way. But Polly didn’t understand them at all, was entirely uninformed and had no forewarning. She hardly even knew what they were doing right this minute, so in her ignorance she just tried whatever she could think of.  
  
“Have you ever _tried to disobey her?”_  
  
“I…” Tom’s slow steps faltered slightly. “Polly, you don’t know what she is,” he said, still fighting to stay within the bounds of those rules that were so beaten into him.  
  
“And I don’t have to,” Polly said. “She could be God himself for all I’d care. Please, Tom. I said I’d help you figure this out, but don’t go where you can’t ask for it. Don’t let someone else decide your future. Don’t give up. I know there are still things you want to do.”  
  
Tom seemed to take a deep breath, though it was clearly difficult, like breathing deep underwater. “Then please help me now. I want to try to see a future with you.”  
  
That was all Polly wanted to hear, and she kissed him soundly, pushing him several steps back and away from whatever fate waited in the mysterious pond. Whether it was the kiss or the desire to try, it was apparently enough. Tom wrapped her in his arms, and when they lifted their heads from each others’ shoulders, they found themselves in the normal version of the Hunsdon House gardens, just the five of them. The bright sunshine, the garden party, and Laurel’s icy gaze had all disappeared, as the stiff compulsion had fallen from Tom’s body. They all looked around and sighed in exhausted relief.  
  
“I had heard of all the rules; I didn’t think you could do that,” Ann said, looking wonderingly at Polly.  
  
“And I was sure you _couldn’t,”_ Tom said quietly, almost in a daze. He gazed down at Polly with such great thankfulness in his eyes that she surely blushed. “I’m sorry I didn’t find a way to tell you about it before.”  
  
“It’s probably better that you didn’t,” Polly said with a shrug. “Then I’d have known too much for my own good, and we’d have had to figure something else out. Probably something more complicated. But you know, I wouldn’t mind an explanation now.”  
  
“I wouldn’t mind one either,” Ed said, packing up his violin. “You know we only managed to piece most of it together by telling stories. It was all quite round-about.”  
  
They each looked at Tom, hoping he would explain, that he _could_ explain, and that it would lift the old dark burden from his shoulders.  
  
“Yes,” he finally said, the simple word full with relief. “I’ll try, anyway.”  
  
“Maybe over dinner somewhere?” Sam suggested, hopeful.  
  
“I’m sure my Granny would love an excuse to bake for friends,” Polly said, leading Tom by the hand and grinning at the lot of them as they followed behind. Tom held on tight, and if he was thinking anything like _she_ was, he was hoping Polly would continue to lead him to a future where their choices truly were their own. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks very much for reading! 
> 
> @ my giftee, if you don't care for it, please let me know and I'll try again! This was my first Yuletide and I bit off a little more than I could chew, but I want to do well by you. I happened to also write another F&H fic which I may post, but it's a fairytale AU that doesn't fit any of your requests. I had something like 30 other ideas when I was brainstorming though, so, perhaps one of those? 
> 
> Anyway, I'm glad I took the opportunity to try this! It was challenging, but fun, and a good excuse to reread a favorite book of mine. After the author reveal I might make a blog post with more thoughts. 
> 
> (And Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year! Best wishes for 2021! <3)


End file.
